Is this withdrawal symptoms or what? - Smoking Cessation Message Board

patcher · 06-28-2006, 08:26 PM

Hi,
I quit smokoing exactly two weeks ago. I've smoked for 25 years about half to a pack a day. I quit cold turkey. My problem now is I feel horrible. I couldn't sleep for a week. Now I can sleep but I can hardly breath. My breathing appears to be a little labored. My sinuses are normally bad , but now they are worse than ever. I also have Gas out of this world. In my back and in my chest. I'm ready to run to the doctor to see if my lungs are collaspsed or what. I'm also thinking did I quit too late and now I have emphysema or something. I pray none of this is true. But could someone who has gone through something similar share your experiences with me. Thanks ..........Worried

Deda · 06-29-2006, 01:22 AM

Hi Patcher....

Congratulations on quitting, but I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling so poorly. It's so weird, but this does come up a lot on this board...people feeling worse, and having a lot of bad symptoms after they quit...sucks, huh?

I read (somewhere online, of course) of a study conducted on smokers who quit, at one of the big medical university's in Pennsylvania...where they studied this on a large number of people after they had quit. They found a lot of them with many inflammatory problems, and it seemed this study found that quitters, (who smoked more than a certain amount of cigs each day, or more...and I'm sure that you too fit into that catagory), were having these problems. There conclusion in this study was that quitting smoking seems to set off some type of inflammatory response in a lot of people. They also ran blood tests on these study subjects, and other medical tests. It was very interesting. I will see if I can locate one day when I have time, and see if I can post that link here.

You might want to go to the smoking index page and look up BarneyTheDog's thread called, "Side effects from quitting smoking"....some other people are on there who are going through the same thing as you.

But no matter how bad it seems, please hang in there...I really believe it will level out and you'll feel much better one day....probably will feel great.

Just hang in there, and you might want to go to the Dr. and get checked out anyway, and let him know that this all started AFTER you quit smoking.

And do take good care of yourself more now than ever right now....eat well, sleep well, keep stress to a minimun, (if you can), exercise, take vitamins, etc. Please let us know if you start feeling better....it's good for other newbies here to read this.

Good luck patches...
Deda

Liamsmom · 06-29-2006, 05:05 AM

It was the same for me. quit cold turkey let's see 2 1/2 weeks ago and I had awfull withdrawal symptoms all of the ones you are describing. it'll pass and believe it or not I stopped counting the days already I only think about it when someone asks. I actually inspired my best friend and she is doing it with the patch. So no worries it's just your body freakin out. But you can do it!!!!!